This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

KANSAS CITY—After everything — after David Price’s early mistakes, after a chinbearded kid pulled a likely double out of the sea and onto dry land, after Jose Bautista cut the lead in half, after Price calmed down, after FOX flashed a graphic that promoted a Mets-Royals World Series in the seventh inning, after Bautista saved Toronto again with a bad ankle, after the rains came ...

“We got very far, but with this team, we should have won the whole thing,” said pitcher Marco Estrada. “It’s the way baseball is. The best team doesn’t always win. That’s just the way baseball is. It’s a crazy sport. It’s not like basketball or football where the best team’s probably going to win. You just never know.

“But you tip your hat to the Royals. They battled. They didn’t give up, either.”

The Royals deserve all kinds of credit. After Toronto had come back to tie the game, and after a 45-minute rain delay, closer Roberto Osuna walked leadoff batter Lorenzo Cain in the bottom of the eighth, and when Eric Hosmer hit the ball to right Bautista threw to second rather than down the line to keep the run from scoring. Cain ran smart and hard, and was waved home by third-base coach Mike Jirschele. It was a gutsy call. Several Jays said Bautista made the right decision. 4-3, Royals.

Article Continued Below

“It was definitely a dangerous play on (Cain’s) part,” said Jays catcher Russell Martin. “He was lucky (shortstop Troy Tulowitzki didn’t get a clean grip on the baseball.”

Edwin Encarnacion and his Blue Jays teammates look on as the Kansas City Royals celebrate their second straight American League championship. (Rick Madonik / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

And in the top of the ninth, against killer closer Wade Davis, Russell Martin got a leadoff single, and Dalton Pompey pinch-ran and stole second and third like it was nothing, and he was 90 feet away, no outs. Dioner Navarro, pinch-hitting, struck out swinging. Ben Revere, a contact hitter if nothing else, took a called strike two that was well off the plate, and struck out on the next pitch.

“It was terrible. It was terrible,” said Revere, who made a wall-scraping catch to keep it close in the bottom of the eighth. “It changed the whole game. If it’s a ball it’s a 3-1 count and he has to throw me a strike. Instead it’s 2-2 and now ... it’s a terrible call. You can’t call that. (The strike zone) was good until the Royals got the lead. With the closer they have, he’s already tough enough as it is.”

Revere, realizing he couldn’t risk ejection, destroyed a trash can in the dugout.

It was left to Josh Donaldson, the best player in the American League or close enough, and Davis. Davis allowed seven earned runs in his first 73 innings pitched this season. Best on best.

ALCS Schedule

Donaldson grounded out to third on a 2-1 count, and it was over. Hell of a game. Hell of a season.

“I feel sad and happy at the same time,” said Osuna. “Sad because we lost, and we worked really hard this year, and I’m happy with what we did this year.”

“Obviously we don’t feel great about the situation now. But give it some time, give it some time to breathe a little bit,” said Donaldson. “Coming into spring training next year, I feel like we’ll have some momentum. There’s been a lot of learning throughout this season for a lot of guys, including myself, and I feel like it can only make you better in the end.”

“I thought we played really well,” said first baseman Chris Colabello. “I don’t think anybody was ready for it to end. Even down 2-0, 3-1, I don’t think there was a second where we didn’t think we were going to win the game. You know, I know at some point there’s only one team left standing, but this is a great group. It’s a shame it had to end.”

The tension had been building all night long. Between the kid with the beard and FOX’s Dewey Defeats Truman graphic, it was easy for knee-jerk conspiracies to flourish. But conspiracies, in sports and elsewhere, are often just incompetence in a different jacket.

No, what happened was Price got drilled early and settled down late. He allowed a first-inning home run to former teammate Ben Zobrist, and he allowed Mike Moustakas to hit a ball just hard enough that it could be pulled over a wall. Price struck out the next two Royals, so theoretically, a double would not have scored. But after a review, the home run did.

Have Your Say

It’s not fair, but that’s baseball. The Cubs could have recovered from Steve Bartman. Jeffrey Maier grabbed a Derek Jeter home run, but the Yankees won the series in five games anyway. The Jays had seven innings to score three runs, or more. They stranded two leadoff runners in the fifth on a ball Donaldson hit 114 mph, and balls that travelled between 110-114 mph this year resulted in a .728 batting average. So it goes. Toronto had won four straight elimination games. They needed a fifth.

And in the eighth inning of a 3-1 game, Bautista delivered. He’d already smashed a solo shot in the third, and Yost tried not to bring Davis in the eighth, and he told FOX it was because he’d seen the forecast.

And with Ben Revere at first Bautista smoked a 96 mph fastball from Ryan Madson to left to tie the game. Bautista kept them alive in Game 5 against Texas, and gave them life again. The throw was unfortunate. The homers were grand.

“What a performance by Jose,” said Martin. “He loves being that situation. He loves those big situations.”

So this is how it ends. Colabello and Donaldson were talking the other day about the best way to approach baseball, and they settled on a maxim of sorts: Care so much that you don’t care. It’s about focusing in so much that you can let go, that you don’t wind yourself into a knot. Donaldson appears to have mastered it this season; Colabello, for his part, says he has never felt as comfortable in his own skin as he has this year.

Jays fans react to Game 6 loss

“In the post-season, there’s so much at stake on every pitch, every moment’s so huge,” said Colabello, who took a preposterously long and winding road to the big leagues, after the Jays won Game 5. “There’s a reason that this team is here, and that team’s on that side. I think they’re the two best teams in the American League.

“There’s so much emotion in the games, and when you’re a kid you grow up dreaming about playing in the big leagues and things like that, but when you play in atmospheres like this, where the crowds are loud, and people are so in tune with every pitch, it just takes you to another level as an athlete, and I think sometimes you’re able to do things that you didn’t know you were capable of.

That’s what Jays fans have wanted for two decades, and a little more, and it’s what they got. Now Price seems likely to walk as a free agent, and the general manager, Alex Anthopoulos, is a question mark for incoming president Mark Shapiro to answer, and soon. The future is far from certain.

But what a year. This team gave you almost everything you could have asked for. They just needed a little more.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

“In the post-season, there’s so much at stake on every pitch, every moment’s so huge,” said Colabello, who took a preposterously long and winding road to the big leagues, after the Jays won Game 5. “There’s a reason that this team is here, and that team’s on that side. I think they’re the two best teams in the American League.

“There’s so much emotion in the games, and when you’re a kid you grow up dreaming about playing in the big leagues and things like that, but when you play in atmospheres like this, where the crowds are loud, and people are so in tune with every pitch, it just takes you to another level as an athlete, and I think sometimes you’re able to do things that you didn’t know you were capable of.

That’s what Jays fans have wanted for two decades, and a little more, and it’s what they got. Now Price seems likely to walk as a free agent, and the general manager, Alex Anthopoulos, is a question mark for incoming president Mark Shapiro to answer, and soon. The future is far from certain.

But what a year. This team gave you almost everything you could have asked for. They just needed a little more.